


the root (of the root).

by serenitysea



Series: i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart). [1]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Stream of Consciousness, this is not a love story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-24
Updated: 2014-04-24
Packaged: 2018-01-20 16:41:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,608
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1517744
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/serenitysea/pseuds/serenitysea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes, when she forgets to remember (Ward is Hydra) she looks at him and is taken aback by how strikingly handsome he is.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the root (of the root).

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! This is my first time writing back into fandom after nearly... a decade, I think. These two crazy kids drew me in. This fic will not directly address Skye as an 0-8-4 but does touch upon what that could mean (abilities-wise) and spin out from there. The style is such that you are kind of experiencing it the way she does (and therefore grows in length and explanation further on.) 
> 
> The title and a particular key phrase in the story come from e.e. cummings 'i carry your heart. (i carry it in my heart.)
> 
> ** Please note there are spoilers for episode 1x19 within. **

**the root (of the root).**

* 

Sometimes, when she forgets to remember ( _Ward is Hydra_ ) she looks at him and is taken aback by how strikingly handsome he is.

In the beginning when they first started training, she thought he was cute in that abstract sort of way. The way you do when you know you don't really stand a chance with the person. ( _"Pay attention, Skye. You need to use every bit of your abilities and trust your instincts to read a situation properly so that you can make the right decision. This is what will keep you alive."_ )

Now that they've shared a few kisses ( _utility closets and secret lairs in canada and --_ ) she thinks that maybe she was wrong.

Her chances have changed. The stars have aligned, all that BS.

\-- Or maybe she just needs to stay alive and since he is Hydra, this is the easiest (only?) way to do it.

( _trust your instincts._ )

That's when she remembers not to forget.

*

Flying in the cockpit without no one else on the Bus is a weird experience.

An altogether too grownup experience, if you ask her.

(She's used to May being in here and quiet sunrises and calm. To Coulson checking up on them occasionally, if he hasn't heard much from them in a few hours. She loved that May would allow her to take it all in peacefully. There was no need for chatter, nothing to talk about mindlessly. The complete opposite of the Lab, or even the Kitchen, at times. 

Like there were north and south poles on the Bus.

She liked the _quiet_.

It gave her a break.)

It feels like Coulson should be checking in on them, or Fitzsimmons should burst through to query what they felt like having for lunch. Like Ward is only flying right now so May can take a breather.

This quiet is not the calm she is used to. This quiet is dangerous. It is dark and more than a little frightening and she doesn't feel at ease, especially with Ward shooting her measuring looks every so often.

She needs to stay alive.

*

Here is the deepest secret (that nobody knows):

She can sometimes _feel_ things.

It isn't an exact science, and it doesn't come in handy when she needs it to. She can't trust it one hundred percent of the time. In fact, most of the time, it feels more like an instinct than anything else. Almost like she has to let go long enough for it to wash over her.

And it doesn't work on everyone.

(Hardly ever works on May.)

The first time it happened with Fitzsimmons (and she still isn't sure which one came through -- maybe both simultaneously), she actually lost her footing and stumbled into the lab table. Too much information ( _hydrogenacidparticlesneuronreceptorsgammarays_ ) streaming in like a freight train and it was hard to shut it off.

They gave her funny looks and she made up a fib about a random bit of turbulence and lack of sleep. Because they are Fitzsimmons and unfailingly kind, they do not fight her on the flimsy excuse. (Neither does anyone interject that May is flying and there is really never anything but flat calm when she's at the helm.)

She goes up to her bunk and turns off the lights and lays there with arm over her eyes until the pounding in her head starts to recede. She doesn't stir when Ward comes to get her for training, though it is a relief not to have to worry about reading him.

*

Ward is nearly impossible to read.

He isn't blank calm, like May.

He's just _dark_. Like a black hole. Nothing exists beyond him.

(Perhaps in hindsight, she should have trusted her instincts and recognized what that sort of darkness could be.)

*

It changes after she gets shot.

The drugs do a great job of keeping her under and she is kind of grateful for it, because feeling everyone else's anxiety and fear is not what the road to recovery is paved with. (Simmons's worry _itself_ is enough to sink her back under.) Except for the tendrils of something hot curling at the edges. It flickers in and out like a faulty lightbulb and she doesn't feel it too much.

For a few days, she doesn't feel it at all.

And then she gradually aware of a firestorm swirling at her feet, burning her up from the inside out. When she opens her eyes, Ward is sitting there with an intensity in his eyes that she has never seen before. That darkness is nowhere to be found within him and the fire threatens to obliterate everything in its path.

(She wonders if this is what the Beserker staff felt like when it coursed through his veins. Wonders if he misses it.)

She has never been successful in controlling a feeling or tamping it down or projecting it elsewhere. Honestly, she barely knows how to read what is coming her way. And while the fire is nice in that it provides energy and strength that is all too wonderful after being in a coma for days -- it is going to exhaust her (and him) if she can't figure out a way to rein it in.

( _She thinks of May; of calm mornings and quiet sunrises. She thinks of the coldest place she's ever known, of Superman's Fortress of Solitude and the Arctic surrounding it._ )

Ward draws in a breath sharply and shakes his head as if to clear it. He places a hand over hers and squeezes as tightly as he dares. She wonders if he can still feel the embers keeping warm somewhere near her feet. 

She is never cold in the lab when he is around.

*

Coulson might know.

( _Coulson knows everything, even when he doesn't._ )

He said that she had good instincts.

So. Coulson probably knows.

*

When she gets shot (when Ian Quinn points a gun at her and pulls that trigger) everything goes cold. Blindingly cold, the kind that burns and hurts and freezes. Her instincts (as Coulson would call them) flare to life and almost drown out the fact that there is a hole in her stomach where the blood is gushing out. The instinct to run is staggering and then there is another, hot on its heels, that the worst hasn't even happened yet -- that the worst is yet to come.

Quinn catches her before she can fall, like some kind of appallingly bad romantic comedy and she cannot pull away. ( _She knows she needs to pull away, pull out of his arms; that this is the beginning of what is next and she can feel the intent swirling in tendrils snaking through his brain into his arm and down to his wrist until he pulls the trigger again --)_

When he guiding her to the ground and wiping off his gun with something eerily like remorse in his eyes, he apologizes and says that he has orders too. She is literally bleeding out with emotion, reeling from Mike's betrayal and the fact that someone just put two bullets in her gut and there is blood seeping from the fingers she has weakly pressed against the hole in her and cannot drown him out. 

_(sosorryi'msosorrythisiswrongandi'msorrysosorry)_

She gasps from the onslaught of his feelings and tries to swallow back the bile mixed with blood in her throat. She has to close her eyes as he walks away and she wonders what on earth could make someone do something they so violently didn't want to do. What kind of orders supersede the instincts inside your own head and override them like rewriting code so completely that there is only a ghost of what once was.

Something dark leeches from Quinn and into her and she can only weakly cry for help once before everything goes to black. 

*

Ward is not acting quite like himself.

She wonders if she is projecting her own nerves onto him; everyone else has left, May (working on repairs on the Bus) and Koenig (his hands full watching NSA surveillance blur into something clear that he can use against Hydra) and Coulson with Triplett and Fitzsimmons (gone after someone in Portland and she is still not entirely sure how that is going to work).

Ward is looking at her with an intensity in his eyes that she has never seen before and it doesn't add up.

She tries to tell him as much and play it off lightly, insisting that she thought they might have died seconds after their first kiss, but he is having none of it. While he opens up and tells her more about his family life (a closely guarded secret if there ever was one), she opens up and tries to get a read on him.

It is patchy and not altogether clear and something is just not right. She kisses him and lets the lines blur a little more, reaching out for anything. (Her instincts are buzzing wildly and she can't figure out why.) The story about his older brother jives well enough but she gets a flash of something _hard_ and it pierces deeply enough that she jerks to a stop and pulls away to see blood on her hands.

For a second, she thinks she did that to him herself, a sliver of something hidden in her finger. ( _sharp and painful and pressing down when something was about to go sideways because this is the only way and --_ )

He laughs it off and says he needs to clean up and she lets him go, wondering what the hell is going on. The feeling of some foreign object in her thumb is so strong she has to look down to ensure there is nothing there. ( _Why is she getting this?_ ) She absently rubs a finger over her thumb and stares after Ward. 

*

There really is no tidy way to deal with the fact that the man she just kissed is a murder.

Not just a murder, but Hydra. In a sick sort of way, it adds up with remarkable clarity and there is no drowning out the klaxons in her head now. Too many things are clamoring for her attention ( _does Coulson know about this what about Fitzsimmons are they safe where is May really how long has Ward been Hydra who else knows who is he working with/for the hard drive she encrypted they need her alive but for how long --_ ) and she jumps when Ward yells out her name.

She has only a few seconds to close her eyes and _reach_ and sure enough, there is Ward. ( _Dark and black and something fierce with terrifying cold orders and efficiency hardwired into his game plan._ )

She wonders why she has no trouble reading him anymore; wonders if she's gotten better or he has gotten worse. (Or is it a combination of the two?) Takes precious seconds she _doesn't_ have, thinks of Ward and presses down her thumb so hard she can nearly feel bone. ( _pain sharp hot pain keeps you in the game keeps you flat when the answers will spike and --_ )

She knows now what that was before, knows if she were to look at Ward's thumb she would find a wound there than enabled him to skirt the issues he couldn't lie his way past. 

Knows that in order to survive she will need to play the game too.

She takes a deep breath and draws it all back inside her head. Ward once spoke to her of compartmentalizing and she thought it was more robotic drivel and would have no purpose in her life but he was her SO long enough that certain things had ways of sticking -- and this is no exception. She pulls out instead a girl in a purple shirt who stared at an agent who had just been shot with truth serum and was willing to submit to any questions she asked if it would make her at ease. (Against his judgment, she knows now.) She pulls out a motive that would make _sense_ for that agent and stuffs it into place. 

When she strolls into the corridor she can feel Ward reaching out (he reaches in a different way; it is clinical and measured and nothing like her) for anything out of the ordinary. She smiles and unleashes the emotions she can trust, flooding him with them and an innocent blank look on her face. ( _impulsive just like always scared me this is moving fast i don't doubt it anymore i want to be with you just you only you like you want to be with me _)__

He watches her so closely as he informs her that they have to leave. He doesn't blink twice when he insists they must leave immediately, or even when he grips her arm with barely restrained force as she moves to grab her things. 

She knows there is no way back from this moment, that everything will hinge upon making him believe that she is in the dark with him. 

_(trust your instincts._ ) 

So she keeps a blank, understanding look on her face until he finally relaxes and puts his hand out to lace their fingers together. She doesn't even flinch when he lies straight to her face as they head to the Bus.

* 

The sun is rising (setting?) and for a second she can pretend like it is May next to her, exuding the immovable serenity that she now knows she had taken for granted. But the feelings next to her are _not_ of serenity and a lockdown on emotions indicative of Melinda May. Too much is coming from Ward in spurts of feeling and battering at her senses. ( _calculating distance and objectivity exit plans escape hatch darkness anger remorse where to next --_ ) 

When he looks at her, she sometimes wonders what he sees. There are moments when his expression softens, it seems against his iron-clad will. Those are the moments when he is hardest to read and it seems like the black hole of darkness from her early days with him.

She doesn't have the time to sift through the myriad of feelings that are fueling his actions, despite the fact that they are coming stronger and more easily than ever before. While the brief hint of remorse gives her a moment of hope it also reminds her of just how little she really knows of this man sitting next to her. Wonders what else she will need to do to convince him that she is with him until the end. 

For some inexplicable reason she flashes back to that wine cellar and Quinn and his staggering remorse and the way he hadn't been able to fight against his orders. 

_(sosorryi'msosorrythisiswrongandi'msorrysosorry)_

She looks out the window and wonders if its anything like that for Ward. If he is battling against his entire self being harshly overwritten and churned out in a tempest. Leaves herself open and vulnerable (though it takes longer to recover and gather herself together) to try and keep a read on Ward.

Sometimes she looks at him and sees her SO. Sees the man who trained her to be who she is and shaped her ability to make decisions despite being in a panicked state or when things start to go sideways. Knows that without his instruction she would not be able to sit next to him and pretend like nothing is amiss. 

*

Her chances have changed. She cannot afford to forget to remember.

This is no love story. He is not the hero.

And she needs to stay alive.

_(trust your instincts.)_

*

**Author's Note:**

> AUGH the feels. Kind of an open ending because I am not sure if I will be able to write a companion piece after next weeks' episode. The two of them on the plane fills me with all sorts of ideas -- plus; here's the guy who basically taught Skye everything she knows and now... he's the traitor. How the hell is she dealing with THAT?! 
> 
> Feedback would be adored.


End file.
